Banished | a Review
originally published on 10/11/2021;
Hello everyone, I am the exiled G.E.M.Simov, a very capable civil engineer who also has a PhD in resource management and city planning. Today, I will tell you about Banished.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it. Also, I am a gameplay designer and a writer so I got the credentials to talk shit.
Gameplay
Banished is a GAME. What kind of game, you may ask? Well, it is a… A medieval city management game that has no ending. You, the player, are presented with a start menu. You, the player, click on the button that initiates the game, and, after a few selections - pertaining to size and difficulty - the game begins.
A big area, square, is relegated for the city. And… That’s everything. From that point onwards, the player, you, must give out commands to their citizens, who can take up a multitude of jobs, from being a simple laborer to being a teacher, or a leatherworker, or a doctor. However, there comes the first issue.
The citizens are, much like real people, retarded. They have some kind of AI, but it is exclusively Artificial, and not intelligent, not one bit. They will use roads, if there are roads, so as to move faster, however, their approach to anything will not attempt to be optimal. Give them the command to gather resources from a certain area? They will travel to the furthest possible point of the designated area, and gather the resources from that location, instead of first gathering resources from the nearest area.
God, whether existent or not, forbid that you, the player, decide to designate ANOTHER area for resource exploitation, before the first area is fully drained. The idiotic citizens of the city, no matter how well educated, will behave like lemmings. As in, they will do stupid things, and everything will fall apart.
Ignoring the stupidity of the citizens and the utter lack of control over them that you, the player, have, Banished is a neat game about city planning and management. The starting make-up of the city depends on the difficulty, but, unless you are a casual, 5 minute per day player, you ought to get on with the most difficult start ever - a cart with barely any food and 4 families.
Direct your, the player’s, citizens to gather resources. Tell them where to build what. Observe as they do so, and then find yourself wondering… Why? Only to then find out that the answer is simple. If not, then we die from the cold, or we are just unhappy and work far less efficiently, or we become so unhealthy we neither work well, nor do we live all that long. Leatherworking? For clothing, to keep people warm while they’re working. Smithing? For tools, to exponentially increase the productivity of the people. Houses? For housing, to exponentially increase the production of people.
Everything in this game is reminiscent of that other game - Factorio - and it is almost all about efficiency. Build up a city, in accordance with what your citizens require - be it food, religion, or even alcohol - but do it in an efficient way, otherwise you will starve, even though you have food. You will find yourself being cold, even though you have firewood - the issue will be that it is simply too far, and the idiots, that are your, the player’s, citizens, cannot understand that they need to go on a brisk, one hour walk, to reach the barn, and then they need to lug around twenty kilos of firewood, for another brisk, one hour walk, so as to keep themselves warm in the winter.
This game is great in the sense that it appears splendidly well suited for the so-called practice of 'map-painting', or, rather, simply the activity of city planning. In a sense, the player, knowing that there will be zero efficiency unless they, themselves, set out to create that efficiency, is urged, by the game, to get to work. The simplest means of describing this is that, as soon as the player gets to playing, they can start laying down the foundations of their city. In fact, if the player has enough knowledge of the game, they can just jump at the opportunity and get to planning out the entire city. The existence of a button that allows the player to postpone building structures, yet still place them on the map, is really pleasant.
It is one of the great things, I say, about Banished, this ability to just create a layout. Actual, proper planning, all the while the game is paused, and nothing is actually happening. The issue is, that… Well, until the player can get to that point, they need to spend a long, LONG time playing the game in the usual manner - which involves just slapping things down as they become necessary and being reactive in your, the player's, approach to playing the game, waiting for your food or tools or clothes or health or happiness to take a hit, which is when you, the player, will figure out that you need to place the appropriate building.
It is fun for the first… Thirty minutes, to maybe an hour, but then it becomes a little tedious. The player sees the growth of their city, and it is a very gradual growth, but it is one nonetheless. It is satisfying, knowing that, at the beginning, there was just a cart of stuff, and now there's a whole square, but… Well, this need for optimization bothers the player. After all, our human brains are manufactured in such a manner that they seek the most optimal approach to everything, as that means we utilize less energy, and the brain is made to conserve energy… So the player feels as though stuff COULD be more efficient, but, well, the means of making it more efficient really feels as though it's the exact opposite of satisfying, and much less, efficient.
Buildings can be destroyed, or, rather, taken down. However, it always takes far more time than it should. Every building tends to have stuff inside it, and, so, before it can even be demolished, it needs to be emptied. The Laborers seem to avoid lugging this stuff around as if it were the plague. It is, frankly, shocking how slow this tends to occur. And then the building goes down, after years of waiting, and, finally, there is room for another building, or for optimization.
It just doesn't feel all that good. Frankly, that's the whole mood of this game. It does not feel all that good. The underlying feeling just messes with the player (Me). The desire for efficiency, for the ants running about on the screen to be doing stuff right and to be getting the best use out of it, makes ME dissatisfied with whatever is happening, half the time. Some stuff seems to be there, but, then, other stuff seems to be missing. I'm just left in a perpetual state of wanting to play the game, because it seems so neat and, maybe, even cool, but it just leaves a lot in my stomach and I can't shake that feeling.
Is it jank? Is it personal preference? Maybe, and, again, maybe. I feel as though this game has a solid platform, but it just lacks some important bits of quality of life, and then also has some other issues that really mess with it. I'm going to be unbelievably harsh here, and I'll give it a low Gameplay score, purely because of the fact that I was left liking it, but not wanting to play it. I feel as though it being a screensaver would have been more pleasant for me, in a sense. Just watching Banished get played… It'd be preferable to actually playing it in its current form. 1/3
Presentation
Banished is gorgeous. Unironically. Even when the settings, the graphical ones, are bumped down to the lowest possible level, the game is still an absolute joy to behold. It is, undoubtedly, a fantastic sight. Every single building looks stunning, the designs are really splendid and then the fact that they can be filled with all kinds of things, and there can be all kinds of other things around them, just makes my heart flutter and race as I observe a village, or even town, in Banished, as they are so pretty and quaint…
Even when sporting a grand total of nothing, the game is beautiful to behold. The way the debris and clutter is thrown about, the way the scenery and the maps, themselves, get generated, is just astounding. Frankly, I could look at the wind whistling through the leaves and slightly shaking the crowns of the trees for a long time. The way stones, in different shapes and sizes, as well as horizontal facings, are sprawled all over, the way the rivers and lakes mix into some fantastic network, the mountains and just…
It looks like magic. The musical scores are a little bare bones, but the sheer visual wonder of the game is… Bah, astounding! 3/3
Story
Banished has no story, as hinted upon by the Gameplay section of this review. The player just starts off, with a group of exiled people, and that's that. However, the game allows for emergent storytelling, and it allows for the most splendid type of emergent storytelling - the one pertaining to a civilization. It's impersonal, and yet has a sense of personality to it.
Well, there was this little town and it grew, and then there was a great fire that totally, savagely brutalized it, but the town managed to rebound, and then a trader came in and sold them chickens, and everything was great.
It has the potential to be a very neat means of telling a little story, of regaling events that are going to be somewhat unique when compared to the experiences of others, and that makes it a little special. However, due to the fact that there is no lore, I can't really give this a truly high grade. 1/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? I am conflicted, when it comes to answering this question.
On the one hand, I want to say yes. I want to give this astoundingly beautiful game, which captures a beauty that seems to be thoroughly untapped in gaming, but, then, on the other hand, I can't let myself do that, because, as a game, it is so unsatisfying, in a weird sense of the word… Thus, I will say NO. 0/1
Conclusion
5/10. An average game, by the looks of it, but it is something quite niche, rather than just a game game. I'd say this is what I would like to see out of the average games of the world, games that are completely passable, but just lack the fire that makes them truly astounding, or even good, overall.
I'd recommend Banished to people who enjoy management simulators. Maybe to folks who enjoy strategy. But, for everybody else… I don't think this is a game you ought to play.
I throw it in the bag of mediocrity. It is not truly mediocre, as it has exceptionality to it, but it is not exceptional enough to be truly good. It might gather some dust, but, hey, at least it isn't slapped on the wall of shame.